Statement

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released the following statement today regarding the Treasury Department's collective settlements amounting to $875 million with HSBC Holdings over the violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran, Cuba, Burma, Sudan, and Libya and the bank's conduct concerning the Bank Secrecy Act. Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:

"HSBC's willful negligence allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to flow from Mexican drug trafficking organizations through the United States, while also enabling financial support for the rogue regimes in Iran, Cuba, Burma, Sudan, and Libya in violation of U.S. law. Today's settlement, the largest collective settlement in the Treasury Department's history, is a great achievement in our quest to hold financial institutions accountable for facilitating illicit activities.

"I want to commend the Treasury Department for its outstanding work in cracking down on these illicit criminal activities--by HSBC and many others. It is my hope that punishing HSBC's violations will have a deterrent effect on those entities that would seek to defy U.S. sanctions and other guidelines put in place to dismantle transnational criminal networks and curb violent extremist activity."